America, it plays on the stage while the rest watches: “Microsoft’s market capitalization reached $2.49 trillion, higher than Apple’s market cap of $2.48 trillion, making Microsoft the most valuable company” in the world. Microsoft is the only big tech company in the world that plays at the center and edges of the smiling curve at scale.
Apple was the first company to reach a $1 trillion and $2 trillion market cap. The smartphone maker achieved the feat after beating oil company Saudi Aramco last year. However, covid-19-induced strains have impacted sales, jeopardizing some of Apple’s growth prospects.
Windows is the operating system of the world of business while Azure is beyond emergent in the cloud. With the world’s finest enterprise salespeople, Microsoft is the absolute business PLATFORM upon which empires of $trillions are built.
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It also tells you that value capturing is not only dominant on the edges, the two largest companies by valuation – Microsoft and Apple do more than just playing on the edges or racking up users, none has two billion users, but they are at the centre of value capturing. They do not give you so many things for free, but all the valuable things in the personal and business spaces run through them.
Amazon will be next in that league, because it keeps evolving into something much bigger in the logistics space.
Having a decent understanding on how these entities are structured will help us make better decisions when we build, because we are too quick to catch the leaves, and never the stem or roots.